Bittersweet Motel

It's hard to say what's more surprising about this Phish tour documentary -- that it's director Todd Phillips's follow-up to the summer gross-out smash Road Trip or that Phillips's one previous rock doc was about New England punk criminal G.G. Allin. Bittersweet Motel is a step closer to the middle of the road for the director, who went into the project as a newbie and emerged as a fan. The film feels as loose as Phish's music, drifting from New York to Europe and back before climaxing at the Great Went, the enormous camping festival the group held in Maine in the summer of '97.

Phillips focuses on the band instead of the cultural phenomenon that surrounds them, eavesdropping on countless good-set/bad-set arguments and giving both Phish and their fans the chance to respond to criticisms that commonly dog the group (their lyrics suck, you have to be high to enjoy their shows, etc.). The performance footage is exciting and plentiful, capturing the band in bar-band mode more often than Zappa freak-out mode. Phish have never put up a façade, so there's nothing revelatory here -- just an inside look at a decent, hard-working band who rose above the fray by putting their music above everything else. At the Avon.
-- Sean Richardson